Obama aide fails to disclose $40K payday from SEIU

posted at 10:12 am on June 29, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

This must be part of the New Transparency of the Obama administration. When the political director for a White House gets $40,000 from the SEIU, which does significant lobbying on policy to both the White House and Congress, that should get declared in order for people to know just how much reach that special interest has within the halls of power. Instead, Patrick Gaspard never disclosed it until Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) flagged it in a letter to the White House:

President Barack Obama’s political director failed to disclose that he was slated to receive a nearly $40,000 payout from a large labor union while he was working in the White House.

Patrick Gaspard, who served as the political director for the Service Employees International Union local 1199, received $37,071.46 in “carried over leave and vacation” from the union in 2009, but he did not disclose the agreement to receive the payment on his financial disclosure forms filed with the White House.

In a section on his financial disclosure where agreements or arrangements for payment by a former employer must be disclosed, Gaspard checked a box indicating that he had nothing to report.

In other words, Gaspard lied. There is really no other explanation. How many of us would “forget” a pending payout of $40,000, especially if we had between $35K-80K in credit card and student loan debt, as Politico notes in its report? The question on the form is specific, and the notion that Gaspard simply forgot about it is absurd.

The White House promised that Gaspard made the “small administrative change” in an update to his disclosure as soon as they were aware of it:

“We have made the small administrative change to this year’s and last year’s forms to indicate that part of the final payment to Patrick reflected their typical severance of one week of pay for each of his nine years of service at Local 1199 of SEIU,” Burton wrote POLITICO in an e-mailed statement.

Yes, it certainly was a “small administrative change” that suddenly disclosed a $40,000 payment to the political director of the White House from a major organization supporting Obama and his agenda. I’m sure no one questions why the SEIU’s lobbyist had so much money coming to him after his decision to join the Obama administration. And how convenient it was that Gaspard got severance pay for quitting the SEIU job to join Obama’s team, especially with all of that debt. I’m also sure that the omission of this payment on disclosure forms had nothing to do with avoiding those questions.

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Nothing will happen to Gaspard. If Scooter is willing to sacrifice the entire Gulf Coast for political ideology and chicanery, do you think he cares about a little more under-the-table money from his friends at SEIU?

I’m more worried about the red tide in Washington than the black tide in the gulf. The red tide can create far more long term damage than the oil spill.

I wonder how this disaster in Washington will end up. Increasingly I encounter people that are steaming mad about the current administration. But, all the minorities I talk to seem to love him. I can’t understand the disconnect, but I have some theories.

I’m not understanding. How is left over leave & vacation time consider severance? Why is it “pending”? Those things are usually settled when you leave a company. They just say a bunch of crap, they don’t even bother to make it seem true.

“We have made the small administrative change to this year’s and last year’s forms to indicate that part of the final payment to Patrick reflected their typical severance of one week of pay for each of his nine years of service at Local 1199 of SEIU,” Burton wrote POLITICO in an e-mailed statement.

Nine weeks of pay = $37,071.46, so that Gaspard made $4,119 per WEEK? That comes out to $214K per year! All those bellboys and parking valets struggling by on minimum wage and tips would be DELIGHTED to know that Gaspard made $214K off their union dues…

The difference between liberals and conservatives (lately, anyway) is that conservatives punish/call out their own more frequently than liberals. Liberals seem to want to ignore, obfuscate or even justify the action when it happens to them.

cor·rup·tion [kuh-ruhp-shuhn]
–noun
1. the act of corrupting or state of being corrupt.
2. moral perversion; depravity.
3. perversion of integrity.
4. corrupt or dishonest proceedings.
5. bribery.
6. debasement or alteration, as of language or a text.
7. a debased form of a word.
8. putrefactive decay; rottenness.
9. any corrupting influence or agency.

Nine weeks of pay = $37,071.46, so that Gaspard made $4,119 per WEEK? That comes out to $214K per year! All those bellboys and parking valets struggling by on minimum wage and tips would be DELIGHTED to know that Gaspard made $214K off their union dues…

Steve Z on June 29, 2010 at 10:35 AM

Gaspard, who made $172,200 in 2009, has from $35,000 to $80,000 in credit card debt and student loans, according to his financial disclosures.
OK how the heack does that happen? He makes that kind of money per year, and has all of those debts. No wonder why no one in this administration has any clue about money and finances.

Johnnyreb on June 29, 2010 at 10:44 AM

Put these two quotes together and try to rectify this in your head.
The amount of outright lies from this Administration are downright Orwellian in magnitude and multitude.

Nine weeks of pay = $37,071.46, so that Gaspard made $4,119 per WEEK? That comes out to $214K per year! All those bellboys and parking valets struggling by on minimum wage and tips would be DELIGHTED to know that Gaspard made $214K off their union dues…

Steve Z on June 29, 2010 at 10:35 AM

Actually, the employer would need to withhold taxes from that, so the payout figure is after taxes, not gross. That makes his salary at the union a fair amount more.

From the article, it seems that the payout was both severance and accrued vacation. NY, like many states, lets employers decide whether employees are entitled to payouts for accrued vacation time when they leave. The union’s policies probably said he was entitled to be paid for unused vacation time.

Q: When an employee resigns — or is discharged — from a job, is the employer required to pay the employee for any accrued, unused vacation time?

A: Whether an employer is obligated to pay for unused time depends upon the terms of the vacation and/or resignation policy. New York courts have held [in Glenville Gage Company, Inc. v. Industrial Board of Appeals of the State of New York, Department of Labor, 70 AD2d 283 (3d Dept 1979) affd, 52 NY2d 777 (1980)] that an agreement to furnish benefits or wage supplements, such as vacation, can specify that employees forfeit accrued benefits under certain conditions. To be valid, the employer must have notified employees, in writing, of the conditions that nullify the benefit.

If an employee has earned vacation time — and there is no written forfeit policy, the employer must pay the employee for the accrued vacation.